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Permalink Reply by Steve Popenoe on April 22, 2010 at 12:34pm

I know this is old, but I think worth talking about some more. The Green Hope Veterans bought me a ticket to the movie as something of a technical investigator to get the scoop on whether the megaflora tree business could really produce legitimate green jobs in the valley, particularly for struggling veterans. The hype was that these trees could grow really fast, producing enormous amounts of biomass, and they could be grown in contaminated soil with poor quality water. There was even some suggestion that the trees could clean up polluted soil, leading to the thought that the west side of the valley, plagued with saline soil and groundwater, could not only be utilized for agricultural production, but that the land and water would be cleaned up and eventually restored to higher agricultural use, like food production. Sounds great.

I left the movie feeling a little disappointed. The trees "clean up" nitrate (a plant nutrient) and their growth is severely stunted by saline soil and groundwater. Of the people I spoke with, nobody thought to do a salt balance to see if growing the trees resulted in overall removal of salt (which would be astounding and would change my mind immediately), so there is no reason to place hope in these trees for restoration of the west side.

These are cool ideas. I enjoyed the movie and thought it was well done. I contest that our valley needs to be realistic as we search for solutions to our water and energy issues. I am still so hopeful for similar or otherwise green solutions, but this one was a bummer.

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